Former footballer and professional players union executive Darren Wilson has been given a regulatory ban after a watchdog inquiry uncovered serious financial mismanagement at a charity for ex-players.The Charity Commission said conflicts of interest, poor financial controls and inadequate management oversight at the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) charity had “let down the players they were supposed to be helping”.The inquiry report covers a period at the end of the last decade when the PFA, a trade union, was racked by controversy over its high executive salaries and alleged failure to do enough for ex-players.The commission inquiry, publication of which was delayed for a number of years as a result of legal challenges, identified widespread examples of “blurred lines” between the PFA and the PFA charity, which funded union salaries to the tune of £5m a year.The union’s chief executive Gordon Taylor, and Wilson, its finance director, were trustees of the charity and two more trustees were nominated by the union. Three PFA charity trustees held positions on the union committee which set the salaries of senior executives.Gordon Taylor, who led the PFA until 2021.Wilson was the right-hand man of Taylor, a former professional footballer who headed the PFA for 40 years until 2021. Taylor’s £2m-a-year salary, making him reputedly the world’s highest-paid union official, was much criticised amid claims the union did too little to support former players with dementia or in poverty.Examples of mismanagement cited in the inquiry report included: